‘NIRF India Rankings 2018’: it’s Central government institutions all the way yet again

IISc, Bengaluru overall best, IIM-A in management, IIT-Madras in engineering, JNU in universities, AIIMS in medicine and Miranda House in degree colleges receive top rankings

The Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Shri Prakash Javadekar presenting the awards under the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), at a function, in New Delhi on April 03, 2018.The Minister of State for Human Resource Development and Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Dr. Satya Pal Singh and other dignitaries are also seen.

NIRF India Rankings 2018, the third annual edition of India Rankings which commenced in 2016, were released on April 3 in New Delhi; saw the central Government funded institutions again in the overall top rankings. Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru stood on the top followed by IIT-Madras, IIT-Bombay and IIT=Delhi. Among universities, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, stood out clearly as the leading university. BHU, Varanasi and Anna University, Chennai, gave company to JNU in top 10.

Expectedly IIMs secured nearly all top rankings in management with IIM-Ahmedabad at top. The only odd rank out in top is Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur at rank 10.

Same with the rankings of medical colleges as all three top rankings went to government funded institutions. All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi followed by Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh and Christian Medical College, Vellore are country’s top ranking medical education destinations.

Degree colleges like last year are again dominated by DU’s reputed colleges Miranda House, St. Stephens`s College, Hindu College, SRCC, LSR. Three Chennai colleges (Presidency College, Loyola College and Madras Christian College) are also in top 10. Significantly Bishop Heber College, Tiruchirappalli, ranks at No 3 in NIRF colleges. The ranking of General Degree Colleges which was started last year, saw a much more enthusiastic participation this year, with 1087 colleges in the fray. This represents an increase by almost 100% over last year.

In law, National Law School of India University, Bengaluru ranks at top followed by National Law University, New Delhi and Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad. Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee lead in architecture followed by School of Planning & Architecture New Delhi at third ranking. National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research Mohali ranks at top in pharmacy. Jamia Hamdard, New Delh and Panjab University, Chandigarh follows at 2 & 3 positions.

This year a total of 2809 institutions had participated in nine categories. Collectively they submitted 3954 distinct profiles, some in multiple disciplines/categories. This includes 301 Universities, 906 Engineering Institutions, 487 Management Institutions, 286 Pharmacy Institutions, 71 Law Institutions, 101 Medical Institutions, 59 Architecture Institutions and 1087 General Degree Colleges. This year participation for a place in the overall rankings rose by 25% over the last year.

“India Rankings 2018” provided a common overall rank across all disciplines for those institutions which have more than 1000 enrolled students.

The data received from both institutional and third party sources were subject to extensive scrutiny for consistency and correctness by a team of experts. The Rankings List includes 100 institutions each in the Overall, University, Engineering and General College Categories, and 50 each in Management and Pharmacy, 25 in Medical and 10 each in Architecture and Law. Additional rankings in suitably bunched forms are also being provided. Four institutions, which could not easily fit into any of the above categories, have been chosen for a special mention for excellence on a few parameters like Research etc.

The parameters used for India Rankings 2018 were broadly similar to those used in previous years. However, some of the sub-parameters have been further tweaked for greater robustness and accuracy. In particular for evaluating Research Impact, parameters for quality of publications have been enhanced to include the number of highly cited papers, (i.e., number of papers lying in the top 25 percentile of citations) in addition to the usual parameters of publications per faculty and citations per paper.

The performance metrics have been optimized to provide a good discrimination over a large range of possible values. All research related information, including publications, citations, highly cited papers and even patent information about institutes was collected from third party databases to obtain an objective and unbiased picture. For this year’s Perception inputs, a large database of eminent academic and industry peers and employers was deployed.

This year also saw the beginning of limited ranking of institutions in new areas like Medicine, Law and Architecture.

Union HRD Minister, Prakash Javadekar, who released these rankings congratulated all the winner institutions for their excellent performance.